What is it like being the White House physician?

Dr. Jackson: I did 14 years of my active-duty career at the White House and I took care of President Bush, President Obama, and President Trump. I was there for the last three years of the Bush administration, all eight years of the Obama administration, and then the first three years of the Trump administration. But the impact I think I had there and the way I think I changed things as I kind of changed the way that we approached medicine at the White House. If you look at what the White House physician does on a day-to-day basis, it’s about probably 30 percent primary care and about 70 percent contingency planning. If everything goes well, you’re not going to be doing a lot, but you’re planning for everything, you’re planning for that bad day. What happens if the President takes a round to the chest? What happens if an IED hits a motorcade, or if the President has a stroke or a heart attack? So, it’s just contingency planning and there’s no better person in medicine to be responsible for that, especially for our head of state and our commander-in-chief, than an emergency physician.

Dr. Dark (@RealCedricDark) is assistant professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the medical editor in chief of ACEP Now.